The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Discovery puts an end to a mystery 10 years ago

A 10-year debate between The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Fans finally finished, courtesy of a former Bethesda developer who worked in the game. This week, Bethesda surprised fans with the revelation of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition, the last relaunching of the game for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X with a lot of new content. That said, this was not the only surprise. SKRYIM The fans obtained this week. Taking Twitter, the developer mentioned above, Joel Burgress, finally confirmed the suspicion of many fans, which is that the foxes take the players to the treasure, but not by design.

In a long thread of Twitter, Burgess explains that when players began to discuss this theory shortly after the launch, the game development team quickly released an informal investigation to deduce who caused the foxes to do this. That said, what he found this research was that nobody did this. Not only nobody confessed, but there was nothing about it in the scripts of the game. So, what was happening? Well, the team finally discovered that it involved a navigation technology of Navmesh, an invisible leaf in 3D polygons standing over the world, indicating where it can and where it can not go.

In most situations, you see to decide what to do (run towards the player, hide in coverage, etc.), use Navmesh to take a path and surf that way, Burgess said. The foxes are not different. But his IA is very simplified: basically * only * can flee. If you scare a fox, flee. So the foxes flee. Why would they flee towards the treasure? Here it is where it gets interesting.

Burgess continued:

If you are near an AI, it is in 'high process or in the search for more elegant roads with intensive CPU use. Use full Navmesh and will do things like vision and distance line checks. On the contrary, there is also the 'low process', which is used for things like NPC that run a commercial route around the world. These are only updated every several minutes and the position is tracked very flexible. The bandit that states her face, however, is running navigation things many times per second. There is a kind of 'average process' for nearby characters, but they did not need the complex route of combat. Due to the way the AI ​​of the fox worked (always fleeing!) Basically, it only uses this process. This is where the understanding of how skyrim uses navmesh enters. Strips of the outdoor world have simple Navmesh. It is not necessary to add many details in a space with basic topography, little mess or few possibilities of combat. Then desert = small number of large triangles. However, when you meet something like a camp, Navmesh becomes much more detailed. The aggregate details added mean additional details of the navigation mesh, and if we place NPC of any kind, we also tend to add more details. Then, points of interest = large number of small triangles. You see where this is going? The Fox is not trying to get away 100 meters, he is trying to move 100 triangles *. Do you know where it is easy to find 100 triangles? The camps / ruins / etc. With those that we fill the world and full of treasures to reward your exploration. So the foxes are not taking you to the treasury, but the way they behave are leading to areas that tend to have treasures, because points of interest with booty have other attributes (many small triangles of navigation mesh) that Foxes are chasing. For players, however, it is the same.

Very well, so inspired by @npurkeypileen The post of the bee yesterday, here is one of my favorite fragments of the oral history of Skyrim: the myth of the treasure fox.

I have counted this story before in talks / etc, but I do not think he shared her with Twitter. Here it goes. pic.twitter.com/7uaulbpmq8.

• Joel Burgess (@joelburgess) August 18, 2021

Burgess continues noting that none of this was intentional, but it is simply the product of the bubbling cauldron of superimposed systems.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is available on almost all modern platforms in which you want to play, including the latest PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles, as well as PC. Whatever the platform in which you choose to play, make sure you follow each and every one of the foxes you see.